When you think Cloud, whether Private
or Public, one of the key advantages that comes to mind is speed of deployment.
All businesses crave the ability to simply go to a service portal, define their
infrastructure requirements and immediately have a platform ready for their new
application. Coupled with that you instantly have service level agreements that
generally centre on uptime and availability. So for example, instead of being a
law firm that spends most of its budget on an in house IT department and
datacenter, the Cloud provides an unavoidable opportunity for businesses to
instead procure infrastructure as a service and consequently focus on
delivering their key applications. But while the understanding of Cloud Computing
and its benefits have matured within the industry, so too has the understanding
that maybe what’s currently being offered still isn’t good enough for their
mission critical applications. The reality is that there is still a need for a
more focused and refined understanding of what the service level agreements
should be and ultimately a more concerted approach towards the applications. So
while neologisms such as speed, agility and flexibility remain synonymous with
Cloud Computing, its success and maturity ultimately depend upon a new focal
point, namely velocity.

Velocity bears a distinction from
speed in that it's not just a measure of how fast an object travels but also in
what direction that object moves. For example in a Public Cloud whether that be
Amazon, Azure or Google no one can dispute the speed. Through only the clicks
of a button you have a ready-made server that can immediately be used for
testing and development purposes. But while it may be quick to deploy, how
optimised is it for your particular environment, business or application
requirements? With only generic forms the specific customization to a
particular workload or business requirement fails to be achieved as
optimization is sacrificed for the sake of speed. Service levels based on
uptime and availability are not an adequate measure or guarantee for the
successful deployment of an application. For example it would be considered
ludicrous to purchase a laptop from a service provider that merely stipulates a
guarantee that it will remain powered on even though it performs atrociously.

In the Private Cloud or traditional
IT example, while the speed to deployment is not as quick as that of a public
cloud, there are other scenarios where speed is being witnessed yet failing to
produce the results required for a maturing Cloud market. Multiple
infrastructure silos will constantly be seen to be hurrying around, busily
firefighting and maintaining “the keeping the lights on culture” all at rapid
speed. Yet while the focus should be on the applications that need to be
delivered, being caught in the quagmire of the underlying infrastructure
persistently takes precedent with IT admin having to constantly deal with
interoperability issues, firmware upgrades, patches and multi-management panes
of numerous components. Moreover service offerings such as Gold, Silver, Bronze
or Platinum are more often than not centered around infrastructure metrics such
as number of vCPUs, Storage RAID type, Memory etc. instead of application
response times that are predictable and scalable to the end user's stipulated
demands.

For Cloud to embrace the concept of
velocity the consequence would be a focused and rigorous approach that has a
direction aimed solely at the successful deployment of applications that in
turn enable the business to quickly generate revenue. All the pieces of the
jigsaw that go into attaining that quick and focused approach would require a
mentality of velocity being adopted comprehensively from each silo of the
infrastructure team while concurrently working in cohesion with the application
team to deliver value to the business. This approach would also entail a
focused methodology to application optimization and consequently a service
level that measured and targeted its success based on application performance
as opposed to just uptime and availability.

Velocity leads to a comprehensive focus on the successful deployment and optimisation of the application

While some Cloud and service
providers may claim that they already work in unison with a focus on
applications, it is rarely the case behind the scenes as they too are caught in
the challenge of traditional build it yourself IT. Indeed it’s well known that
some Cloud hosting providers are duping their end users with pseudo service
portals where only the impression of an automated procedure for deploying their
infrastructure is actually provided. Instead service portals that actually only
populate a PDF of the requirements which are then printed out and sent to an
offshore admin who in turn provisions the VM as quickly as possible are much
closer to the truth. Additionally it’s more than likely that your Private Cloud
or service provider has a multi-tenant infrastructure with mixed workloads that
sits behind the scenes as logical pools ready to be carved up for your future
requirements. While this works for the majority of workloads and SMB applications,
with more businesses looking to place more critical and demanding applications
into their Private Cloud to attain the benefits of chargeback etc. they need an
assurance of an application response time that is almost impossible to
guarantee on a mixed workload infrastructure. As the Cloud market matures and
the expectations that come with it with regards to application delivery and
performance, such procedures and practices will only be suitable for certain
markets and workloads.

So for velocity to take precedent
within the Private Cloud, Cloud or even Infrastructure as a Service model and
to fill this Cloud maturity void, infrastructure needs to be delivered with
applications as their focal point. That consequently means a pre-integrated, pre-validated,
pre-installed and application certified appliance that is standardized as a
product and optimised to meet scalable demands and performance requirements.
This is why the industry will soon start to see a new emergence of specialized
systems specifically designed and built from inception for performance
optimization of specific application workloads. By having applications
pre-installed, certified and configured with both the application and
infrastructure vendors working in cohesion, the ability for Private Cloud or
service providers to predict, meet and propose application performance based
service levels becomes a lot more feasible. Additionally such an approach would
also be ideal for end users who just need a critical application rolled out immediately
in house with minimum fuss and risk.

While there may be a number of such
appliances or specialized systems that will emerge in the market for
applications such as SAP HANA or Cisco Unified Communications the key is to
ensure that they’re standardized as well as optimised. This entails a converged
infrastructure that rolls out as a single product and consequently has a single
matrix upgrade for all of its component patches and firmware upgrades that
subsequently also correspond with the application. Additionally it encompasses
a single support model that includes not only the infrastructure but also the
application. This in turn not only eliminates vendor finger pointing and
prolonged troubleshooting but also acts as an assurance that responsibility of
the application’s performance is paramount regardless of the potential cause of
the problem.

Driving the Velocity of Change within the industry: VCE's new SAP HANA Vblock specialized system

The
demand for key applications to be monitored, optimised and rolled out with
speed and velocity will be faced by not only Service providers and Private
Cloud deployments but also internal IT departments who are struggling with
their day to day firefighting exercises. To ensure success, IT admin will need
a new breed of infrastructure or specialized systems that enables them to focus
on delivering, optimizing and managing the application and consequently not
needing to worry about the infrastructure that supports them. This is where the
new Vblock specialized systems being offered by VCE come into play. Unlike
other companies with huge portfolios of products, VCE have a single focal
point, namely Vblocks. By now adopting that same approach of velocity that was
instilled for the production of standardized Vblock models, end users can now
reap the same rewards with new specialized systems that are application
specific. Herein lies the key to Cloud maturity and ultimately the successful
deployment of mission critical applications.

For more information on VCE's new specialized Vblock Systems please visit:

While pop stars have the Grammys, actors & actresses have the Oscars and Simon Cowell's latest manufactured projects have the Brits, techie geeks such as myself have the annual pleasure of voting for the Top Virtualization Blogs.

This year as I went on the site to cast my vote for my usual top ten, I was surprised and delighted to see the SANMAN up for nomination. To say I'm chuffed is putting it mildly and I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of the readers that visit this site.

While I sometimes struggle to try and blog as much as I want in my spare time, I'm extremely appreciative of the many readers that visit and take the time out to read my posts. It is indeed you that keep me motivated to stay up in the late hours of the night writing!

It’s been nearly 11 months since I joined VCE as a vArchitect. In that short amount of time I’ve not only seen an incredible amount of development and change within the IT industry but also within the company I’m so excited to still be working for.

The changes within the industry have been astounding as the awareness and market for Converged Infrastructure continues to grow at an unprecedented level. CIOs, IT Directors and CTOs are quickly realizing that they can achieve business objectives at minimum risk, in a quarter of the time and with more than 60% operational savings with a CI as opposed to the traditional build it yourself or reference architecture models they’ve been accustomed to.

Analysts such as IDC and Gartner have also validated VCE’s customers’ savings and CI market leadership in their recent analysis.

With imitation being the best of complements, my 11 months at VCE has also seen “competing” vendors launch their own quasi-versions of converged infrastructure from HP’s Cloud Matrix, Huawei’s FusionCube to IBM’s PureSystems and Dell’s Active. While they’ve certainly adopted all of the marketing messaging of VCE’s unique value proposition in reality they’re still a long way from the standardized, pre-integrated, pre-validated and pretested product offering of a Vblock. Indeed they are still more akin to the reference architecture offering of NetApp’s FlexPod. Until they adopt a standardized product based approach they will still struggle to produce a correct bill of materials in the same time VCE delivers and installs a production ready Vblock.

So while the ever changing industry and market plays catch up it’s even more exciting to see VCE prepare to launch their next phase of offerings that will undoubtedly propel them even further ahead of the competition and entrench it’s position as the market innovator and leader.

While I’m unable to reveal anything prior to the deadline set for Thursday 21st February 4pm GMT (blogs will follow), I can confirm that VCE are bringing additions to their portfolio that will have the industry in a frenzy particularly in the management, orchestration and compliance space.

With industry luminaries and leaders such as VCE CEO, Praveen Akkiraju, Cisco CEOJohn Chambers, EMC CEO Joe Tucci and VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger speaking at the launch, this is one announcement not to be missed.

Who is the SANMAN?

Disclaimer

The thoughts, comments, views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own and not those of the company I work for. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by my employer and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the company I work for.